Jul 31, 2011

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan-After hearing that his son would be deploying to Afghanistan, Sgt. Maj. Robert Allen of Marine Wing Support Squadron 272 began making the arrangements to join his son in Afghanistan.

NIMBY Nation: Mad as hell and I don’t blame ‘em. For now.

Trust in positive change is a limited commodity. Courtesy of Scott Doyon.

Scott Doyon, New Urban Network

You know, I gotta give NIMBYs their due. In many instances, their tireless efforts have kept the world from becoming a worse place, and that’s no small feat. But, sadly, it’s not their only accomplishment.

They’ve also kept the world from becoming a better place.

Welcome to the problem with NIMBYs. Their reactionary nature can’t tell the difference between bad change and good. And that’s a problem if you’ve any hope for building better communities.

New book list and new reading rules for you

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos has released a new professional reading list for all Marines, and cracking open a book could now factor in more clearly at promotion time.

Each Marine must read one book per grade per year, Amos said in all-Marine administrative message 027/11. That requirement isn’t new, but the message also gives commanders discretion to determine whether the reading is being done.

A UH-1Y Huey helicopter crew chief with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 267 (HMLA-267) looks up grid coordinates on an iPad during a mission supporting Forward Operating Base (FOB) Edinburgh, Afghanistan. HMLA-267 recently moved a detachment of attack helicopters to FOB Edinburgh so that air ambulances could be safely accompanied as they carried injured Marines to receive care.

Jul 28, 2011

Welcome home, gentlemen. Your country appreciates your service and sacrifice.

Missing World War II Soldiers Indentified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced Monday that the remains 12 U.S. servicemen, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

They are Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Jack E. Volz, 21, of Indianapolis; 2nd Lt. Regis E. Dietz, 28, of Pittsburgh, Pa.; 2nd Lt. Edward J. Lake, 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; 2nd Lt. Martin P. Murray, 21, of Lowell, Mass.; 2nd Lt. William J. Shryock, 23, of Gary, Ind.; Tech. Sgt. Robert S. Wren, 25, of Seattle, Wash.; Tech. Sgt. Hollis R. Smith, 22, of Cove, Ark.; Staff Sgt. Berthold A. Chastain, 27, Dalton, Ga.; Staff Sgt. Clyde L. Green, 24, Erie, Pa.; Staff Sgt. Frederick E. Harris, 23, Medford, Mass.; Staff Sgt. Claude A. Ray, 24, Coffeyville, Kan.; and Staff Sgt. Claude G. Tyler, 24, Landover, Md. The remains representing the entire crew will be buried as a group, in a single casket, Aug. 4 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Eight of the airmen were identified and buried as individuals during previous ceremonies. Shryock, Green and Harris were also individually identified and will be interred individually at Arlington on the same day as the group interment. These 12 airmen were ordered to carry out a reconnaissance mission in their B-24D Liberator, taking off from an airfield near Port Moresby, New Guinea, on Oct. 27, 1943. Allied plans were being formulated to mount an attack on the Japanese redoubt at Rabaul, New Britain. American strategists considered it critical to take Rabaul in order to support the eventual invasion of the Philippines. The crew's assigned area of reconnaissance was the nearby shipping lanes in the Bismarck Sea. But during their mission, they were radioed to land at a friendly air strip nearby due to poor weather conditions. The last radio transmission from the crew did not indicate their location, and in the following weeks, multiple searches over land and sea areas did not locate the aircraft. Following World War II, the Army Graves Registration Service conducted investigations and searches for 43 missing airmen, including these airmen, in the area but concluded in June 1949 that they were unrecoverable. In August 2003, a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) received information on a crash site from a citizen in Papua New Guinea while they were investigating another case. He also turned over an identification card from one of the crew members and reported that there were possible human remains at the site of the crash. Twice in 2004 other JPAC teams attempted to visit the site but were unable to do so due to poor weather and hazardous conditions at the helicopter landing site. Another team was able to successfully excavate the site from January to March 2007 where they found several identification tags from the B-24D crew as well as human remains. Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA - which matched that of some of the crewmembers' families - in the identification of their remains. Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died. At the end of the war, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000 Americans. Today, more than 73,000 are unaccounted-for from the conflict. For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO website at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call 703-699-1169 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting703-699-1169end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

Jul 23, 2011

There aren't many reporters that relate to the troops the way Joe Galloway can.

A good talk, a good man.

Subject: Joe Galloway's talk - You are my brothers in arms

Given to the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association

"Thanks to all of you for giving me the honor of speaking to you. I have got to tell you that looking out across this assemblage I must the last time I visited Leavenworth Prison. I confess: I haven't seen this many bad boys collected in one location since. When I first learned that I would be doing this gig I asked anaviator buddy of mine what else I needed to know......and he said, well, mostof you would be bringing your wives along.......that half of you wereso damn deaf that you couldn't hear a word of what I was saying.....theother half would be so damn drunk you couldn't understand what I wassaying..... so I might just as well talk to the ladies......

I have waited years to be able to share this story with so august agroup of aviator veterans as this: A few years ago I was at a largeofficial dinner and I was seated next to a nice lady who was the wife of atwo-star general. I knew the lady had two college- age daughters and I also knew that one of them had been dating a Cavalrylieutenant.......so I thought to make some \polite conversation and I offered her mycondolences at her daughter's choice of companionship. "Oh No!" the general's wife said. "He is a fine young man. Nothing wrong with him......andat least he isn't a goddam aviator!"

I just wanted you to know that your successors in the biznesscontinue to win friends and influence people in high places. Before I go alongany further in this thing I need to ask you some questions: --Is thereanyone here who flew with the 1st Cavalry Division? The 229th? The227th? How about the old 119th out of Holloway? Any Marine pilots who flewthem old CH-34 Shuddering Shithouses??? Now I know I am among closefriends......I know that old Ray Burns from Ganado, Texas, is here.....andI have got to tell you a story about me and Ray that goes back toOctober of 1965. Plei Me SF Camp was under siege by a regiment of NorthVietnamese regulars. I was trying to get in there.....like a fool......butafter an A1E and a B57 Canberra and one Huey had been shot down theydeclared it a No-Fly Zone. So I was stomping up and down the flight line at Holloway cussing......when I ran across Ray. He asked what the problem was and I told him. He allowed as how he had been wanting to get a look at that situation and would give me a ride......

I still have a picture I shot out the open door of Ray's Huey. We aredoing a kind of corkscrew descent and the triangular berms and wire ofthe camp below fill that doorway.....along with the puffs of smoke from the impacting mortar rounds inside the camp. Hell.....I can scare myself bad just looking at that photo.

Well old Ray drops on in and I jump out....and the Yards boil out ofthe trenches and toss a bunch of wounded in the door and Ray is pulling pitch.....grinning......and giving me the bird. When the noise is gone this sergeant major runs up: Sir, I don't know who you are but MajorBeckwith wants to see you right away. I ask which one is the major and I am informed he is the very big guy over there jumping up and down on his hat. I go over slowly. The dialogue goes something like this: Who the hell are you? A reporter. Son, I need everything in the goddam world from food and ammo to water....to medevac......to reinforcements.....and I wouldn't mind a bottle of Jim Beam.......but what I do not need is a god dam reporter. And what has the Army in its wisdom delivered to me? Well....I got news for you.....you ain't a reporter no more; you are my new corner machine gunner." Ray.....I want to thank you for that ride.......wasn't for you and Chuck Oualline I wouldn't have had half as much fun in Vietnam.

Hell.....every story anyone has about Vietnam starts and ends with ahelicopter......you guys were simply fantastic. Thank you all. Thank you for every thing....large and small.

Now I guess I got to get down to bizness. All of you know that I have spent most of the last forty years hanging out with the Infantry.....a choice some folks view as perverse if not totally insane. But there was always method in my madness: With the Infantry things happen close enough that I can see what's happening.....and slowly enough most times that even I can understand what I'm seeing. There's just this one little downside to my long experience with the Infantry:

During that time I have personally been bombed.....rocketed.....strafed..... and napalmed by the U.S. Air Force.....U.S. Navy......U.S. Marines.....and U.S. Army Aviation......as well as by the air forces of South Vietnam.....Laos......Sri Lanka......India......and Pakistan. Now I don't consider myself an inconsiderable target.....and wasn't even back when I could fit comfortably behind a palm tree......but here I am....running my mouth.....nothing hurt beyond my dignity. Don't get me wrong; I don't hold any grudges against those gallant winged warriors. But ever since the first time they attacked me and missed.....I have never ever used the words "surgical bombing strike" in any story I ever wrote.

I had the chance to say some good things about all of you at the Memorial Service at The Wall on Sunday. I meant every word of that..... and more. You chopper guys were our heroes in Vietnam. You were our rides....but you were much much more than that. We were always either cussing you for hauling our butts into deep kimchi.....or ready to kiss you for hauling us out of it. I have a feeling that without you and your birds that would have been a much shorter and far more brutish war.

You were our heroes, though, first, last and always. You saved us from having to walk to work every day. You brought in our food and ammo and water.....and sometimes even a marmite can full of hot chow. To this day I think the finest meal I ever ate was a canteen cup full of hot split pea soup that a Huey delivered to a hilltop in the dry paddies of the Bong Son Plain in January of 1966. For a moment there I thought if the Army could get a hot meal out to an Infantry company on patrol maybe.....just maybe.....we could win the damn war. Oh well.

I think often of all that you did for us.....all that you meant to us: You came for our wounded. You came to get our dead brothers. You came....when the fight was over.....to give us a ride home from hell. There isn't a former Grunt alive who doesn't freeze for a moment and feel the hair rise on the back of his neck when he hears the whup whup whup of those helicopter blades.

What I want to say now is just between us.....because America stilldoesn't get it.....still doesn't know the truth, and the truth is: You are the cream of the crop of our generation.....the best and finest ofan entire generation of Americans. You are the ones who answered whenyou were called to serve.....You are the ones who fought bravely andendured a terrible war in a terrible place. You are the ones for whom thewords duty. .honor. country have real meaning because you have livedthose words and the meaning behind those words.

You are my brothers in arms....and I am not ashamed to say that I love you, would not trade one of you for a whole trainload of instantCanadians.....or a whole boatload of Rhodes Scholars bound forEngland......or a whole campus full of guys who turned up for their draft physicalswearing panty hose. On behalf of a country that too easily forgets thetrue cost of war.....and who pays that price....I say Thank you foryour service! On behalf of the people of our country who didn't have goodsense enough to separate the war they hated from the young warriorsthey sent to fight that war.....I say we are sorry. We owe you all a verylarge apology.....and a debt of gratitude that we can never adequately repay.

For myself and all my buddies in the Infantry I say: Thanks for all the rides in and out....especially the rides out. It is great to see you all gathered here for this reunion. A friend of mine, Mike Norman, a former Marine grunt....wrote a wonderful book called "These Good Men" about his quest to find and reunite with all the survivors of his platoon from Vietnam. He thought long and deep about why we gather as we have done this evening and he explained it thusly:

I now know why men who have been to war yearn to reunite. Not to tell stories or look at old pictures. Not to laugh or weep. Comrades gatherbecause they long to be with the men who once acted their best.....men who suffered and sacrificed.....who were stripped raw......right down to their humanity. I did not pick these men. They were delivered by fate and the military. But I know them in a way I know no other men. I havenever given anyone such trust. They were willing to guard something more precious than my life. They would have carried my reputation.....the memory of me. It was part of the bargain we all made.....the reason we were so willing to die for one another.

As long as I have memory I will think of them all.....every day. I amsure that when I leave this world....my last thought will be of myfamily and my comrades.......such good men. I'm going to shut up now andlet us all get dow n to the real business of drinking and lying.....er.....telling war stories.

Thank you. I salute you. I remember you. I will teach my sons the stories and legends about you. And I will warn my daughters never ever to go out with aviators......